The Clay Sculpture
by barricade boi
Summary: AU: Waking up in a hospital room with a head full of bandages and a body littered with scars, Harry's mind is completely blank. The man who had vowed him his life had not yet come. Was it his face? His scars? Enter Tom Riddle, his knight in shining armor, a long lost friend who reintroduces an unknown world to a curious amnesiac. And for a while, Tom seems content to pretend.


**Author's Note**: Well, I have written two products on this story. One goes to another website where all that is different is the names (and it is more heterosexual than it should be). The second one is this, oozing with one of the most unrequited HP pairings ever. Probably the succeeding chapters will be longer. I have no beta (or an extremely talented mind) so please excuse whatever fault I make.

**Copyright**: I swear to God I own nothing and earn nothing from this. Everything besides the plot belongs to the author of Harry Potter herself, the most awesome J.K. Rowling. Does anybody even read this? I mean, it's basic knowledge that we're just little souls begging for a story that will never be real and we really don't get any profit from this.

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Chapter 1: The Light That Shines

_I was afraid for the light had not left. Yet it surrounded the two men ahead of me like a radiant sun and it was so unnatural. Were they the gods that I never believed in? I feared that I was dead. But my loud heart was beating steadily and I knew I was alive._

Everything seemed to be bathed in an unnatural light. It appeared out of nowhere, from the devoid of total darkness to an explosion of white, ethereal light. It was painful to an almost torturous level. The back of his eyes were starting to feel the dull ache. His head felt heavy, as if there were a hundred more heads balanced on his shoulders and skull. He was unable to move from the heavy restraints below his waist.

He was expecting the light to fade at any moment, but it grew brighter with each passing second.

Where was he?

He felt his eyes widen, but not totally feel it like he was _inside_ his body. Something was prodding on his arms and chest. The force of each poke and jab grew harder, rougher until there was a slight pain every time it touched his skin. Would he bruise because of this? He used to recall being able to bruise easi—

_What?_

His train of thought was cut off suddenly. He tried to think again. His eyebrows scrunched together, or rather he felt them scrunch together. What was he about to say?

An endless seam of questions began to rove across his mind. What happened before this? Where exactly was he? Why was he here?

There were so many questions and he wasn't even able to address them all. The promises of a headache were already greeting him.

Soon, voices began mingling with his thoughts, strange deep voices and something else, something akin to a steady beating but not entirely so. Was that his heart? His mind was working at a hundred thoughts per second and yet nothing went past his mind but the questions he kept asking himself. The blank canvas was wrought of anything but the now that was happening before him. It was as if replaying any incident in the past was completely impossible to his being.

There was fear of not being able to conjure an image of the past. In a state of panic, he began to shake slightly. There was nothing of his past, of last week, of yesterday that entered his mind. What was wrong with him?

And then, the lights began to dim slowly. The relief that flooded him wasn't as calming as he expected. The nausea washed over him and if he could, he would have doubled over. He was physically and mentally drained. All he wanted to do was stop thinking for once, close his eyes and slee—

_Oh my god_. What was that?

The scream that had erupted from his lips surprised even himself.

A bolt of pain had run through his body, like a fast but boiling liquid entered his veins and remained there for a few seconds before vanishing completely. He couldn't really explain it. It was definitely something he would never want to experience again. The pain felt a thousand times worse than falling off a cliff, had he been in that situation (and he certainly hoped he would never be).

The emptiness that followed was worse. He was left immobile and thoughtless, like a ragged doll with no soul. His insides were churning, but surprisingly hollow.

It was fleeting but the memory alone was strong enough to make him feel limp, feel dead. And that was the worse of it all. Being bereft of all life. What exactly was that? To the entirety of his life up to this point, he had never felt so...

A thought struck him so painfully like a blow on his already throbbing head. Was he… _dead_? Was he robbed of the life he so dearly held on before?

"Harry?"

His ears perked up. There was _someone_ somewhere in this odd room calling a Harry… What was this Harry? A small, practically nonexistent thought nudged the back of his mind. What exactly was a Harry?

Or who was this Harry?

Was… he Harry? His eyes widened in horror. How could he not know his own name? His name wasn't supposed to be a memory long gone. His identity, lost. So many possibilities for a single name he did not know. A hundred, thousands even, of names went past his eyes, zooming like lightning and disappearing as they appeared.

_Carson, Robert, John, Percy, Louis, Henry, Jacob, Tyler, Edward, Kyle, Thomas, Sebastian, John, Lucas, Steven, Peter, Matthew, Jason, Mark, Casey, Benjamin, Christian, Nicholas, Sam, Harold, James, Benny, Ron, Arthur, Michael, William, David, George, Donald, Kenneth, Fred, Anthony, Scott, Ethan, Joshua, Walter, Patrick, Douglas, Ryan, Albert, Wayne, Martin, Shawn, Alan —_

_Harry._

What was his name? Perhaps it was this Harry.

It sounded odd for the word to be echoed in his mind without a response from his memory. _Hah-ree_ seemed to sound content though, as if it belonged inside his thoughts. And in all honesty, it was familiar _and_ unfamiliar. But what exactly was it?

The light was yet to dissipate and all he could make out were moving blurs still bathed in a yellowish-white halo.

"—ry, are you awake?"

Of course he was awake. And totally aware. After that horrible awakening, who wouldn't be awake? He tried to move his mouth to reply, but no sound came out.

There were more words from his mysterious audience but all he could pick out were the syllables of every other word.

"Not stabilizing—"

What was not stabilizing? Himself? How odd. He was sure he was stabilized. He wasn't really worried or anything. Besides the pain, forgetting his name and all the not being able to move, he was fine.

"There's still no respo—"

No response? The light was reducing to a deep grey and the people began to move faster. The moving blurs were linking themselves into one, large moving glob of darkness.

"—medication."

Medication? What was that for? _Wait_. What was that? _Oh!_ That felt… nice. He felt himself go strangely numb, weird but not totally unpleasant. His eyes were drooping, but who could really tell the difference? His peripheral vision was darkening after all. Why was he tired? His body felt less tense. He liked it.

And without really knowing it, he let himself sink into the soft confines of the bed, getting sleepier and sleepier and…

"Get the—"

And, not for the first time, he was unaware of the scream that passed through his lips. His thoughts focused on the singular pain that racked through his whole body. His entire being was on fire. The sensations around his bones, ligaments, skin were as if they were being burned on a stake and doused with ice cold water and burned again. He could feel his skin melting, _combining_ with his bones. Then, become brittle from the coldness of the invisible water that washed over his shaking body.

The temperatures on his body were in a mad frenzy. No other explanation would have fit perfectly. His eyes rolled back into his socket in an attempt to faint from the pain.

What was with these people? If he had been in perfect control of his senses, he would have gouged out the eyes of the person next to him once he finished gouging out his own.

After the first few seconds, he stopped telling himself they, whoever they were, would stop doing what it was they were doing that caused such horrible, horrible pain because, unlike the last time, the pain did not stop.

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**Word Count: **1,234

**Date: **December 26, 2012


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